Over 650 snow records set in USA this week – another wonky surface station located

UPDATE : The NWS responds about the station issue, see below. – Anthony

Almost 60% of the contiguous USA covered in snow.

A volunteer walks along the practice green as snow falls during the Match Play Championship golf tournament, Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2013, in Marana, Ariz. Play was suspended. Photo: Ross Franklin – click for the story

While pundits spin attempts at linking snowfall in the Northeast USA to AGW, much like they do in the summer during heat waves, we find that Nature is just taunting them with snow as far south as the Mexican border in Arizona. And there is more to come, in the next week, we may see snow into Florida. During the last week, 652 new snow records were set in the CONUS as seen in the map below:

The record furthest south, in Paradise, AZ, of 6.3 inches snowfall, beat the old 2 inch record going all the way back to 1896. Paradise, AZ is just 40 miles from the Mexican border. You can see all the snow records yourself here.

I also had a look at temperature records this past week, where there were 92 new record low temperatures all the way into Florida, and only 20 new high temperature records set:

One record in particular, at Jal, NM piqued my interest, because it was in the middle of a bunch of record low temperatures. Not only that, it beat the old record high in 1953 by quite a margin, besting it by 7 degrees:

There are no new high temperature records anywhere close to this station, and it stands out like a sore thumb.The nearest official hourly reporting station in Wink, TX just 26 miles away, shows a high of only 62 on Friday February, 22nd according to this data from Weather Underground sourced from NWS:

I had a strong hunch that this station in Jal, NM may have poor siting which contributed to the new record anomalously warm high on Friday, it turns out my hunch was correct.

According the NCDC metadata, the Jal station is a Class A station, meaning it is part of the climate monitoring network. While not part of the USHCN, it does serve as a station used for infill and pairwise comparisons when trying to homogenize the surface temperature record. The NCDC location metadata was a red flag to me: JAL POLICE DEPARTMENT WITHIN AND 2 MILES SE OF POSTOFFICE AT JAL NM

With just a little research, I was able to locate a photo of the station, courtesy of a survey page from New Mexico State University. The photo showed yet another parking lot weather station:

In the photo above (which I have annotated) the Standard Rain Gauge is clearly visible and what looks like the MMTS temperature sensor shelter on a pole is in the distance near the front of the building. Such placements are typical, they try to get over grass where they can trench a cable back to a window or a wall opening to the display in the office.

A further check of metadata revealed the station is located at 32.1103 -103.1872, within the town according to NCDC metadata, and this Google Earth image:

While that lat/lon puts the station in the parking lot, I note that typically most GPS readings in NCDC’s metadata are good to only about 100 feet. And sure enough, right where I suspected it was, was the telltale shadow of the MMTS shelter. Some annotation was added to the Google Earth image to help you visualize what I know from years of experience doing aerial station surveys.

The photo above has an imaging date of 2/7/2011, seen in lower left – winter time, just slightly over a year ago. Click the image to enlarge it for a closer view.

So to summarize:

1. We have a new record high that is anomalously warm, 96 degrees F. No official nearby stations set any comparable high temperatures or new temperature records in the same time frame. It appears all stations experienced similar warm dry breezy weather that day.

2. We have a NOAA temperature sensor a mere 7 feet from the sidewalk and 16 feet from a large brick building (according to the ruler function in Google Earth and the photo from the NM State survey page).

3. We have a massive parking lot beyond that, and a major road just beyond the parking lot, plus a semicircular drive. Essentially the temperature sensor is surrounded with heat sinks.

4. We have a low albedo surface, dry brown grass, under the temperature sensor in February as evident in the Google Earth photo from a year ago, there’s no reason to suspect this year would be any different.

5. The station is located within the UHI bubble of the town.

So given the sunny dry weather with a lack of nearby comparable temperatures or new records, heat sinks all around, the parking lot, the building, the low albedo of dry grass under the sensor, it seems entirely likely to me that this is a false high temperature record.

I have sent a note to NWS in Midland Odessa to have them investigate.

Update: The original photo of Snow on cacti provided by Scrape TV stated on the Scrape TV article it was from 2013. Alert reader J Philip Peterson pointed out the photo they used was from 2007. I’ve updated the photo at the head of the story for accuracy. – Anthony

UPDATE2: 2/25/13 7AM PST Here is what the NWS Midland says in an email to me:

Anthony,

I did find that JALN5 COOP did erroneously report 96 degrees. Unfortunately, the report did make it to a preliminary report OSOMAF. I checked the database use to compile the record to see if the report was corrected, and the database had updated to show the data as missing. This means that the official record will not include the bad report.

The last available RERMAF online is the latest one in our AWIPS system as well. Historically, our site has only issued RER products for the MAF site (also the only site for which daily and monthly climate products are generated), though expansion in the future is possible.

Though the graphic in the article compares observations to the official record and appears to show a new record at Jal, reports gathered from COOP observers in real time should always be considered preliminary. COOP observations are QC’d daily and at the end of the month before they are submitted as final. Not all COOP sites are ideally sited, but the overriding problem with the Jal report appears to be sensor malfunction. The high temperature data has been edited for bad data for several days.

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111 thoughts on “Over 650 snow records set in USA this week – another wonky surface station located”

Likely the high temp record is a dyslexic anomaly – 96 should be 69…..REPLY: Right, if so, it would not be a record then. This data was entered by touch tone Weathercoder over the phone, so entirely possible – Anthony

Also some of the “record high temperatures” should have been reported as “record low high temperatures” such as these two for California at Lancaster and Palmdale:
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LOS ANGELES/OXNARD CA
515 PM PST WED FEB 20 2013
…RECORD HIGH AND LOW TEMPERATURES SET TODAY AT AT FOLLOWING
LOCATIONS…
A RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE OF 49 DEGREES WAS SET AT LANCASTER
AIRPORT CA TODAY. THIS TIES THE OLD RECORD OF 49 SET IN 1962.
A RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE OF 48 DEGREES WAS SET AT PALMDALE
AIRPORT CA TODAY. THIS TIES THE OLD RECORD OF 48 SET IN 1962.
A RECORD LOW TEMPERATURE OF 40 DEGREES WAS SET AT UCLA TODAY.
THIS TIES THE OLD RECORD OF 40 SET IN 1990.

Locally no records were set, but we (N45°22’59.31″ W86°53’49.35″) are getting close to our long term average snowfall after a couple of thin years. I told Milady Wife at breakfast that it’s likely time to get a snowblower for my tractor.

I live near Twain Harte, Ca. Where snow is common enough but the smallish storm that brought about 8″ of snow in about 3 hours on Tuesday also saw snow down near sea level as well. It’s been a mild winter with a very cold December but a warm January. If things don’t pick up precipitation wise it will be two consecutive winters with less than average rainfall and I’ll have to listen to the idiot news commentators about global warming all summer. Doesn’t anyone remember the 70’s drought in California?

On related note, winter storm watches & blizzard watches here in the Colorado front range for tonight & tomorrow with the latest system dropping in out of the Pac NW. Good, tight model consistency indicating this will be our biggest snow this season (in what has been a very dry winter). Lovin’ it! We need the moisture. Snow day tomorrow!

Would the wind be a factor in the false readings? I noted that the winds seemed a little strong, 12 and 20 knots. If the winds were wicking heat off of the building or parking lot and the weather station was receiving that warmed air, could it be a contributer to the false high?

And # (6):
“it does serve as a station used for infill and pairwise comparisons when trying to homogenize the surface temperature record.”
If this doesn’t get corrected, it will artificially smear that grid higher !!

Otter says:
February 23, 2013 at 8:27 am
I thought they claimed we would be seeing hotter colder winters?
===========================================================
Along with less or more drier wetter snow.

I’m telling you, guys, “We’re all gonna’ burn up and die! Our grandchildren will never see snow!”
Oh, wait! That was the “old” story. The new story is that, “We’re all gonna’ get ‘changed’ to death!” Hard to keep track of AGW prognostications, isn’t it?. I think Ma and Pa Kettle may be getting a bit suspicious of “them ‘gubment expert fellas'”.

If all you say about the site is correct, how many high temperature records has it been setting? Not to deny the claim that this is an anomalous reading, but its readings should be out of whack all the time.

The record high red dots on the map in the San Diego/Orange County region of Southern California were not record highs, but record low maximums. No record high temperatures have occured in this area in February which is running about 4 degrees cooler than “normal” (which is actually the average of the last 30 years). We all know that the concept of “normal” is invalid in our constantly shifting climate.

Transposition seems like a good bet. But the elephant in the room is the proximity to the parking lot which creates a lot of opportunities for idling trucks, etc. to affect temperatures long enough to report an extremely high false max. What happens when the roofers come out and park their tar heaters, if that’s the term, there to maintain the flat roofs? How can this possibly be considered a “Class A” site?

While not part of the USHCN, it does serve as a station used for infill and pairwise comparisons when trying to homogenize the surface temperature record
Let me see if I get this right. When this station sets a record high the other stations are adjusted to match. When it sets a record low, it is adjusted to match its neighbours. Is that close enough for government work?

Dan in Nevada says:
February 23, 2013 at 9:35 am
“Transposition seems like a good bet. But the elephant in the room is the proximity to the parking lot which creates a lot of opportunities for idling trucks, etc. to affect temperatures long enough to report an extremely high false max. What happens when the roofers come out and park their tar heaters, if that’s the term, there to maintain the flat roofs? How can this possibly be considered a “Class A” site?”
Excellent point. Warmists claim (insist) that the parking lot site would raise the temperature only once and could be easily accommodated in the math. The truth is that the parking lot means that there is a menagerie of influences on that station. My favorite example is two government employees idling their government vehicle next to the public tennis court that I am playing on while they eat a leisurely lunch. If you think that sucker is not hot then you are nuts.

with that large of a difference the raw data for the station would be flagged for “regional inconsistency” .so a few months from now folks will complain about raw data being thrown out because of QA. anyway it will be interesting to see what the Qa process outputs down the road when the data is checked before being used in homigenization.

Anthony, be careful with Google Earth. I have seen locations off by more than 100′ when compared to land surveys and site visits.

No, the (potential) Google earth error of several hundred feet is meaningless – we have the actual four-lane highway position, building position around the weather station, and parking lot position around the actual photograph of the temperature station. Moving the entire assembly a few feet east/west/north/south will not change things. it’s like moving the city – the middle of the city will still stay the same relative distance inside the city’s UHI zone of higher temperatures. Hwy 18 is running north-south, so the shadows prove the building is immediately east of the thermometer.
Specifically, note that the weather station (thermometer box) is on the west side of a “U” shape building, less than 15 feet from the heat reflecting from the building walls and less than 20 feet from a large parking lot reflecting heat energy “UP’ from the pavement the entire day. Granted, the box is exposed to (potential) northerly winds, but winds were from the east a few miles away in Texas, from the west part of the day here in NM (where the urban heat would be concentrated even in this small a town), and not from the north at any nearby station.
The heat radiated all afternoon from those U-shaped building walls so close to the thermometer box over so many degrees exposure on the box’s east side is the big immediate influence.

There are two more just as interesting. Pendleton (probably at the airport) and that one in the middle of the bible belt surrounded by purple dots. Must of been near a Wednesday afternoon sermon at the local Baptist church.

with that large of a difference the raw data for the station would be flagged for “regional inconsistency” .so a few months from now folks will complain about raw data being thrown out because of QA. anyway it will be interesting to see what the Qa process outputs down the road when the data is checked before being used in homigenization.

Please show us 25 specific evidences of previous “regional inconsistencies” (hot spots) actually being eliminated from Hansen’s NASA-GISS’s homogenization program. Say, find just one record high eliminated per year for each of the past 25 years.
Alternatively, find 25 instances where “cold” records have been used to reduce the hotspots: What happens is not that hot spots are eliminated by recording the real temperatures at cooler areas, but all cold records are moved up (averaged up) into their warmer neighbors.
Within Hansen’s code for his homogenization program, show us the “flags” that highlight such hotspots for manual over-riding or manual correction and elimination.

Steven Mosher says:
February 23, 2013 at 10:06 am
“with that large of a difference the raw data for the station would be flagged for “regional inconsistency” .so a few months from now folks will complain about raw data being thrown out because of QA.”
That is an incomplete solution because it does not produce an actual reading of genuine data. In the age of computers, why not flag the reading as “temporary aberrant reading” and record the entire aberration for examination later by humans? The larger benefit would be that you would have a record of aberrant readings and proof that weather stations next to parking lots are worthless.

The only “science” I know where “homogenization” is not only tolerated, but encouraged. If I did that as a mining engineer my butt would be tossed to the curb before quitting time. That’s why your results (yes, I blame it on all who agree with such deplorable antics) are both questionable and laughable. Over time, it’s getting more and more difficult to justify such “adjustments” as logical or desirable.

Manfred says:
February 23, 2013 at 10:27 am
Pay special attention to Germany. It is five years in a row for Germany. Skepticism is mushrooming in Germany, On top of that mushroom is a Green plus Government rock that is heavier than any other in the West.

Eric Booth says:
February 23, 2013 at 7:39 am
“Likely the high temp record is a dyslexic anomaly – 96 should be 69…..”
The same thing has been done here too a number of times IE they said it was 36.1c and a near record when realy it was 31.6c.

Theo GoodwinThat is an incomplete solution because it does not produce an actual reading of genuine data. In the age of computers, why not flag the reading as “temporary aberrant reading” and record the entire aberration for examination later by humans? The larger benefit would be that you would have a record of aberrant readings and proof that weather stations next to parking lots are worthless.
This is what I have been banging on about lately.
Total responsibility for climate records and historical data should be taken away from NCDC, and handed back to each State. It would be quite easy then for a few local operators to check every site, even with physical visits, to ensure that measurements are reliable, and that any adjustments to the historical record, including UHI, were made on the basis of known local information and experience.

Paul Homewood says:
February 23, 2013 at 11:38 am
Theo Goodwin
“This is what I have been banging on about lately.
Total responsibility for climate records and historical data should be taken away from NCDC, and handed back to each State. It would be quite easy then for a few local operators to check every site, even with physical visits, to ensure that measurements are reliable, and that any adjustments to the historical record, including UHI, were made on the basis of known local information and experience.”
Keep banging. The Alarmists are bluffers. It is taking us a while to unpeel this particular onion. As the questions become more focused, Alarmists retreat.
Aberrant changes could be identified by computer quite easily. Just flag anything that goes up too high and maybe too quickly.

The nearest official hourly reporting station in Wink, TX just 26 miles away, shows a high of only 62
Perhaps there is another reason the other reading was 69 and not 96. Did they get a new person who happened to be German? The reason I ask is that in German, the numbers are stated backwards compared to English, so sixty nine would be said as “nine and sixty”. So someone who may not have listened carefully may have wrongly written 96. Is this the case with other languages as well?

John Coleman says:
February 23, 2013 at 9:09 am
The record high red dots on the map in the San Diego/Orange County region of Southern California were not record highs, but record low maximums. No record high temperatures have occured in this area in February which is running about 4 degrees cooler than “normal” (which is actually the average of the last 30 years). We all know that the concept of “normal” is invalid in our constantly shifting climate.
================
John Coleman,
Thanks for your input.
Whilst I am happy to accept your take onyour local ‘normals’, here in the UK, I prefer –
“We all know that the concept of “normal” is magnificently mutable in our constantly shifting climate.”
Even our Met. Office is – I think – understanding that climate is not weather [and nor is vice versa accurate].
Just my local perspective: trust you accept this.
Auto

Werner Brozek says:
February 23, 2013 at 12:09 pm
The nearest official hourly reporting station in Wink, TX just 26 miles away, shows a high of only 62
Perhaps there is another reason the other reading was 69 and not 96. Did they get a new person who happened to be German? The reason I ask is that in German, the numbers are stated backwards compared to English, so sixty nine would be said as “nine and sixty”. So someone who may not have listened carefully may have wrongly written 96. Is this the case with other languages as well?
_______________________
Or it could be, that they are lying their butts off, just like “they”always do.

It’s not global – it’s not even the whole NH given the projection used for the image.
RACookPE1978 says:
February 23, 2013 at 10:39 am

An image for the northern hemisphere for 2/21/2008 (the February immediately after 2007-2008 low point in northern sea ice extents) would be more informative than that of February 21 2007.

When I set it up in 2009, I may have displayed image from two years before, but in 2010 switched to 2007 because that was the more interesting year and because the Anthony’s base page said 2007. I don’t have the access rights to change that. I figure seeing the run up to the (then) record ice melt season was more interesting than the recovery.
I don’t know if we should switch to 2012.

Anthony, that record high minimum temp SW of Phoenix, looks like Maricopa, which I happened to check out recently. Its located in a field at an irrigation research center. As irrigation and changes in irrigation can cause temperature changes of the order of 1C to 2C. Any temperature data from that location is worthless for climatology purposes. And any temperature record is likely to be influenced by irrigation (changes).

JDN says:
February 23, 2013 at 11:34 am
@Anthony: “would you know how to get a hi-res picture of the snow on cactii? It’s nice. I’d like to make it a wallpaper for my computer.”
I used Bing and searched for [ Arizona cactus snow ] with the images tab selected. The image at the top of this post claims a source of scrape-tv.com. That same image is in the middle of the 6th row down of my Bing search results. Click on the image. Then find the “more sizes” link. The lower right image is 1024 x 682. Click and save the image.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Pamela Gray says:
February 23, 2013 at 10:15 am
“There are two more just as interesting. Pendleton (probably at the airport)”
That’s Meacham about noon and the previous reading was just 1 or 2 degrees less. I looked this morning and those were the last 2 hours I could find. Now they have moved on as only 7 days are shown. I don’t see how to access the earlier part of the day.
You must be close by – go check out what they have there.

That suspicious record high in Maine is in Corinna, which is not too far from Bangor.
It looks like that site has major problems. Some points match fairly well, but some are way, way, off, like 59 on Feb 1 (Bangor Airport recorded 29). The low for the month so far are -5 and -7, believably close.
Data from http://www.nws.noaa.gov/climate/xmacis.php?wfo=car

There is a Wunderground weather station in Corinna that reports 45 on the 15th (as does the NWS), and 33 on the 16th (31 in Bangor).
It looks like Corinna needs to be fixed, shutdown, or replaced with “Halfcrazy’s” home weather station.

In the UK here, it is much colder than average, and has been so for a while. Its normally around 8C, but the temperature won’t rise to more than 2C, during the day and has been like this most of January and February. It has been a harsh winter, and hey presto, we’re getting 50mph winds on top of the chill over the next few days.
I guess this is one of the aspects of mild winters associated with global warming

The Corinna Maine NWS site appears to be at the north end of the town’s wastewater treatment plant, see both https://maps.google.com/maps?q=44.91972+n+69.24167+w and http://www.lagoonsonline.com/corinna-maine.htm .
The Google map page has low resolution compared to other areas in New England, but the coordinates may point at a Cotton shelter just north of the sewage lagoons. I suspect winter days with a light southerly wind can easily cause high temps that are 20 degrees above temperatures up wind of the lagoons.
What may be worse is that “treated wastewater is land applied using spray irrigation instead of being discharged to the river and, ultimately, Sebasticook Lake.” The spray system will elevate the temperature of large volumes of air in the sprayed area and the area downwind. I’m some of these plumes must reach the thermometer.
Next, I’ll dig up that site that has stations’ metadata history. Here are a couple good timeline events:

The Corinna Sewer District (CSD) POTW was constructed in 1969 to treat a combination of 85 percent industrial and 15 percent domestic wastewaters. All industrial wastewaters were contributed by the now defunct Eastland Woolen Mill.
When Corinna’s advanced wastewater treatment facility went on-line in September 2005, a key component of a multi-faceted plan to improve Sebasticook Lake quietly fell into place. No longer will treated and untreated wastewater feed algae blooms that have clouded the waters for decades.

That white stuff in the photo? That’s not snow!
When the warm front of AGW (decades of propaganda and vilification) meets the cold front of science (radiative gases are critical for convective circulation and cooling of the troposphere) and is uplifted over a mountain of evidence (sceptics will never forgive and the Internet will never forget) it results in vast areas being covered in the rabid foam of warmists.
While this fluffy white material may look inviting, caution is advised. It can render common forms of lame stream media soggy and transparently biased, and prolonged exposure has been known to cause incurable leftardulence in humans.
/sarc

No. 96 degrees in February IS – even in Texas – a remarkable and notable event. Here, at 3300 feet elevation in the high plains in NM? No.
This cannot, thinking of excuses like water spray or cooling towers or anything else, be something other than error or thermometer failure.
But remember, Mosh claims it will be removed from the record.

Steven Mosher [February 23, 2013 at 10:06 am ] says:
“with that large of a difference the raw data for the station would be flagged for “regional inconsistency” .so a few months from now folks will complain about raw data being thrown out because of QA. anyway it will be interesting to see what the Qa process outputs down the road when the data is checked before being used in homigenization.”

Excellent Steve. In one run-on sentence you manage to …(A) Take a dump on a actual Scientific skepticism of an indisputable siting and UHI problem.(B) Rationalize data tampering by Hansen and NASA by implying that all their self-serving adjustments are to solely remove bad station stiting and UHI.(C) Re-educate everyone that continuous, untampered, single sited sources are bad and that homigenization[sic] is good.
Has anyone just graphed out the continuous pure untampered data from one single site? I mean a site with Scientific controls that didn’t move the location around over time and used the same equipment and methodology and didn’t have the surrounding locale morph from grass to concrete. I’d really like to know.
Ideally we should have lots of these for reference. And all single-sited graphs should show prominent markers that denote any possible changes that may affect results ( “thermometers changed here” or “parking lot created here” etc ). Then, following AGW legend, we should see single sites from higher latitudes with slightly greater increasing slope than lower latitudes. And that trend should match very tightly to sites along the same latitudes.
Has this been done yet? I guess not because Mosher, the lukewamies and the greater AGW cult would be prominently advertising it instead of pushing averaging averages in homigenization[sic].

The other thing about that Waynesboro TN “record high” is their value of 78, while all the surrounding values are “record low max” values in the 30’s.
I can’t find a single station in that area of Tennessee that had temps above 40 for the 20th.
I’ll bet it’s a location thing, because according to the SurfaceStations gallery, the Waynesboro TN station appears to be at a water treatment plant.

Expect no response from NWS.
However, expect a visit from the FBI.
Your activity indicates, according to the FBI and DHS and White House, that YOU ARE Mujahedeen-Al Qaida and subject to White House ordered kill permission. The FBI visit will be to confirm that YOU are who YOU are, prior to the execution of the kill order.
Bon Voyage

One day snowfall records are an extremely poor indicator of trends or climate. I”m sure all the editorial team are aware of that.
Let’s see the season-long snowfall totals in April, eh? Let’s see the average winter temperature at the same time.
I think you’ll find that Europe has been cooler and reasonably snowy this winter. I’m less sure what the USA’s report will say.

In Dutch as well negen en zestig (9+60) and BTW we have registered SOG for 60 days straight in our desert area since Dec. 6, records show this happens roughly every 20-22 years, our average annual rain fall is 18 -25 cm (south-north) in our valley, located between the Coastal and Rockey mountains (rain shadow lovely to watch on satellite pics)

It fascinates me that something deadly like the cold and snow in a desert can be so visually attractive. That picture is gorgeous. Nature has a habit of packaging attractive but deadly things: the “cuddly” polar bear, the beautiful tiger, the soaring eagle, the hypnotic sway of a cobra, and women. Okay, that last one is going to get me in trouble… 🙂

Ric Werme says:
February 23, 2013 at 1:44 pm
Manfred says:
February 23, 2013 at 10:27 am
World snow cover from sea ice pagehttp://home.comcast.net/~ewerme/wuwt/cryo_compare_small.jpg
It’s not global – it’s not even the whole NH given the projection used for the image.
————————————–
There is no snow worth mentioning elsewhere.

R. Harwood says:
It isn’t snowing here in Brisbane.
Hey.. I thought it ALWAYS snowed in Brisbane in Febuary… darn… things are getting REALLY bad.
No snow down in Newcastle either. wtf is going on ?????

“If all you say about the site is correct, how many high temperature records has it been setting? Not to deny the claim that this is an anomalous reading, but its readings should be out of whack all the time.”
Err, no Mike Barnes as every accountant knows only too well when the books don’t balance. You just don’t go losing any discrepancy in petty cash like Big Climate do, particularly with the sums they’re playing around with. You never know if it’s a sign someone’s fiddling the books big time.

Rhys Jaggar says:
February 23, 2013 at 10:25 pm
> One day snowfall records are an extremely poor indicator of trends or climate. I’m sure all the editorial team are aware of that.
Nah, the “editorial team” only knows about forbidden topics and excessive trolling. Sometimes they’ll fix a typo or bogus HTML.
> Let’s see the season-long snowfall totals in April, eh? Let’s see the average winter temperature at the same time.
Seasonal snowfall totals are horrible things to compare, at least here in the NE USA. The integral of snow depth over the season (snow depth days) is even worse. I have data for 15 years at http://wermenh.com/sdd/index.html . The most consistent data for me (Penacook) are low snowfall seasons. 7 of 13 years are between 40-51″ of snowfall, but the SDDs for those years range from 170 to 474.

Steven Mosher says:
February 23, 2013 at 10:06 am
” .so a few months from now folks will complain about raw data being thrown out because of QA.
===============================================================
No, most folks won’t complain because we will know that the data was incorrect.
We will continue to to complain with the other 99 99/100 of data changes that are done without explanation and are very spurious

Leg says:
February 23, 2013 at 10:52 pm
It fascinates me that something deadly like the cold and snow in a desert can be so visually attractive. That picture is gorgeous. Nature has a habit of packaging attractive but deadly things: the “cuddly” polar bear, the beautiful tiger, the soaring eagle, the hypnotic sway of a cobra, and women. Okay, that last one is going to get me in trouble… 🙂
————-
Alright Leg, that made me laugh.
cn

There will be more winter records broken during the next few decades as the global cooling sets in:
NORTHERN HEMISPHERE
The winter temperature anomaly for the Northern Hemisphere as measured by Hadcrut3gl shows a negative linear trend for 15 years since 1998
EUROPE
The winter temperature departures from 1961-1990 mean normal for land and sea regions of Europe have been flat or even slightly dropping for 22 year or since 1990
UK
The winter temperatures for Central England 9CET) have been declining since 1988 and very noticeably since 2006
UNITED STATES
The annual temperature for Contiguous United States has been dropping since 1998 at -0. 80 F per decade
The winter temperatures for Contiguous United States has been dropping since 1990 or at -0.23 F per decade [per NCDC] or 22 years
The winter temperature for Contiguous United States has been dropping since 1998 at -1.95 F per decade
The summer and spring temperatures have been warming and winter and fall temperatures have been falling giving an overall annual cooling for 15 years
CANADA
The annual temperature departure form 1961-1990 averages has been flat since 1998
The winter temperature anomaly has been rising mostly due to the warming of the far north and Atlantic coast only
8 of the 11 climate regions in other parts of Canada showed declining winter temperature departures since 1998
During the 2011/2012 winter the Canadian Arctic showed declining winter temperature departures
RUSSIA/ ASIA
The winter of 2012 has been extremely cold for Moscow and Russia as a whole. Moscow winters are getting progressively cooler.
December 2012 cold weather hit -30 C in Moscow
Coldest in70 years in Eastern Russia. [Temperatures hit -50C in Siberia]
”At the end of 2012, Russia saw extreme winter not witnessed since 1938. The snow that has been falling since November last year has paralyzed life in Russia’s capital. Moscow . The snow-cover height reached 2.16 m: It was the snowiest winter over last 100 years
1.

60% of contiguous US snow-covered. Possibility of freezing weather during spring break in FL. Snow covered cacti in Tuscon. Perfect time to predict alarmists will eventually declare 2013 as the hottest year ever.

Mosher writes “with that large of a difference the raw data for the station would be flagged for “regional inconsistency”
Only when the difference is large can it be effectively dealt with. There are many more ways for a thermometer to experience and record moments of unintended warmth (especially in urban settings) than there are for them to experience and record moments of unintended cold. Its easy to locally add energy but much harder to locally take it away and so there must be a warming bias in the absolute readings, some more and more often than others. Homogenisation must then add warming bias. But how can you account for that?
Does it matter in the trends? Well it might…
Compare this to TOBs where because a solution can be conceptualised, it can be applied.

Has the Watts, Jones, Mcintyre, Christy paper, “An Area And Distance Weighted Analysis Of The Impacts Of Station Exposure On The U.S. Historical Climatology Network Temperatures And Temperature Trends” been published yet? Is it in process? It needs to be.

DCA, A typical maneuver for warmists is to identify existing trends and cycles, then “predict” that trend as a result of carbon dioxide-induced warming. I don’t state this lightly, but from my reading of papers in this “science” for 20 years, scientific method is often loosely employed. There really is a lot of bias. Of course, there are plausible hypotheses that a warming of the atmosphere could affect the jet stream this or that way, but there are myriad plausible (and untestable) hypotheses on how this could play out. Warmists tend to hone in on “what’s been observed” first, then pick the plausible explanation to match.
In my opinion the physics questions are not even appropriately answered, especially when it comes to how much radiative heat GHG can absorb before saturation, and the maximum “direct” effects of an increase. The papers I’ve read seem to start out on the right track to a good calculation (at least some do, with the Beer-Lambert equation and some estimates and assumptions about absorption) , but then they skip over the final calculations of direct effects and approach it from the opposite side (empirically), saying essentially “we’ve observed these trends, which can’t possibly be due to natural variations, and so they must be from the direct and indirect effects of CO2.” I wish we could get more physicists interested. To do this right, we’d need tons of absorption data for various gas mixtures at various temperatures (this is being gathered), and a model that integrates this across time, space, and temperature. I don’t think it’s been properly done.

DCA,
That is just an assertion, and it has no scientific basis. Tell them to give you a verifiable mechanism that directly connects AGW to the jet stream.
For that matter, tell them you want specific, quantifiable measurements of “AGW”. So far, no one has been able to provide any such scientific evidence.
AGW may exist, but there are no measurements of it because its effect is so small. The fact that there are no measurements of AGW is the reason there is still a debate raging over the climate sensitivity number.
If we could quantify AGW with verifiable measurements, we would have an accurate, falsifiable sensitivity number. But we don’t, because AGW is only a conjecture.

Werner Brozek says:
February 23, 2013 at 12:09 pm
The nearest official hourly reporting station in Wink, TX just 26 miles away, shows a high of only 62
Perhaps there is another reason the other reading was 69 and not 96. Did they get a new person who happened to be German? The reason I ask is that in German, the numbers are stated backwards compared to English, so sixty nine would be said as “nine and sixty”. So someone who may not have listened carefully may have wrongly written 96. Is this the case with other languages as well?
*****************************************************************************************
Just as well it wasn’t a French person. Here in France the French would say that 96 is 80 and 16 (more accurately, quatre vingt seize or four twenties and sixteen). Now that is a really high temperature 8016F
Steve T

Al G: Hey Jim! Can I bother you for one minute?
Jim H: It better be important Al, I’m very busy with my raw data. It takes me all day to adjust the recent temperatures upwards.
Al G: It’s just that I’m confused Jim.
Jim H: What about Al?
Al G: Well the thing is, you told us that we were all going to fry when you gave your testimony on that day that the air conditioning broke.
Jim H: Yes……
Al G: So when I made that film ‘The Inconwenient Trooth’ I told everyone that were all going to die in a ball of searing heat. Everyone loved the film, especially Leo from Hollywood (but not some stoopid UK judge).
Jim H: So…..
Al G: Well the thing is, it’s actually damn cold right now. I’ve had to turn up the heating in all my homes, and my private jet’s been grounded because of snow. How am I gonna fly to the store and back now?
Jim H: The problem is you don’t understand Al
Al G: A lot of people say that to me….
Jim H: Yes well, never mind. Anyway, when we said it was going to get really hot because of global warm…climate change, that actually meant it was going to get rather cold. Simple, isn’t it?
Al G: Right, so whenever you say it’s going to get hot I need to start getting my thermals on and putting snow tires on the limo.
Jim H: That’s not what I said! You’re twisting my words Al!
Al G: I could make a new film and call it the ‘Inconwenient Cold’. I reckon I could get another Oscar.
Jim H: You’re starting to get on my nerves Al! Anyway, I can’t stand around here all day, I’ve got to go and get myself arrested outside a US power station. With any luck, I’ll end up in a cell with Darryl Hannah. Now, where’s my floppy hat?
Al G: I tell you what Jim, let’s dig my jet out of the snow and fly ourselves over to China. I hear they’ve got loads of new power stations to demonstrate outside of.
Jim H: Good god man, are you mad? They’re not paralysed with Western Liberal guilt. They’d just lock me up and throw away the key!
Al G: I’m confused again Jim. You told me the other day that you, “Really wanted to make a true difference and highlight the really big fossil-fuel fanatics”. Isn’t that the Chinese and their rapidly expanding economy?
Jim H: That’s it, get out of my office! I can hear my phone ringing. It’ll be bloody Bill weeping down the phone at me again. Or Dave Z asking me where I can get some nice young females for him….

Re Jal NM.
Google images back to 1996 show in Jal, New Mexico, “five-site deployment construction of a solar farm in 5 parts that was expected to be fully operational by the end of 2011. The five sites will be comprised of utility-scale, photovoltaic solar power arrays that are expected to deliver more than 112 million kilowatt hours of solar energy in the first year of operation alone.” Ref: http://www.solardaily.com/reports/Xcel_Energy_And_SunEdison_Break_Ground_On_Solar_Deployment_In_New_Mexico_999.html
If this is so, then the construction traffic that passed through town would have an effect over years, though a more subtle one. Because the solar collectors extend 50 miles around Jal, there might be a UHI bubble of an unconventional type that would be worth a study, especially because there is a simplification of night versus day conditions. (Not to be confused with the single hot day of 22 Feb 2013 discussed above).
The reasoning is that study of land use effects on temperature can be complicated if there is a mixture of land uses. Here we have a dominant, new, large land use, solar, supported by number of images since 1996. The location would stand a better chance than many places of showing a systematic change as the regional reflectivity was altered. Find a few more comparison stations and the signal might just be strong enough to show. Of course, it could also be too minor to show.
It would also be interesting to see if cloud coverage and rainfall on that 50 m radius showed a systematic change before and after the solar panels.
I’ve driven north near there on the way to Santa Fe and nothing seemed to change very fast.

I wonder what the albedo of Arizona snow is. With the sun so high, wouldn’t it bounce a heck of a lot more heat back into space than the Arctic Ocean, especially as there are parts of the Arctic Ocean which still have a month to go before sunrise? I mean, even if the snow melts away in six hours in Arizona, if you plug those six hours into the computer model, what might occur? (No wise-guy answers, please.)
If I’m going to worry and become an alarmist, I’ll worry more about a possible Little Ice Age.http://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2013/02/24/the-quiet-sun/

herkimer says:
February 24, 2013 at 7:52 am
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Love to see where you got your information from as Environment Canada has been telling us that we have warmed by 3 to 4 degrees over the last 65 years – depending on what base they choose to use. eg – winter temperatures up 3 plus degrees.http://www.ec.gc.ca/adsc-cmda/default.asp?lang=en&n=8C03D32A-1http://www.ec.gc.ca/adsc-cmda/default.asp?lang=en&n=8C03D32A-1#a1
This one says 1.4 degrees 1948 to 2009 as an average over those years.http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/110323/dq110323b-eng.htm
From EC 2011 summary:
National Temperature
The national average temperature for the year 2011 was 1.5°C above normal (1961-1990 average), based on preliminary data, which makes this the eighth warmest year on record since nationwide records began in 1948. The warmest year was 2010, 3.0°C above normal. At 1.9°C below normal 1972 was the coolest. As the temperature departures map below shows that most of the country was above normal, with most of Nunavut at least 2°C above normal. An area over southern Alberta and British Columbia was the only part of Canada with near normal temperatures this past year.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Undoubtedly EC uses homogenized data, who knows. So I would love to see your source to see what the difference is from EC’s steadily rising format.
I love their use of the term “NORMAL”. How the heck do they know what “NORMAL” is??
Thanks.

From the look of the shadows, I’d place that sensor in a generally southish facing position. That is, the building is forming a barrier to the cold north while the sun in the low angles / southish warms the facing pavement and the backstop building. Just the kind of place to seek out when it’s cold, but clear and sunny. The “warm trap” that is south facing with a warm wind break to the north.
Given how far off the temp reported was, I’d expect something else was broke too; but the site is just not very good.

I think the real question is how a 96F was ever entered at all. I don’t care whether you’re looking at it upside down, speaking German, idling a truck next to it or whatever. If I’m in Sydney and I send someone to read the thermometer in Katoomba in August and he says “35C” while it’s snowing nearby I call BS and send him back to do his job properly. What’s WRONG with these people??

How did the wind turbines handle the high winds? I tried various search words, but haven’t been able to scrounge up any news. Some reports from folk down there would be helpful. Do turbines continue to operate in a blizzard, or do they shut them down?

The N.W. S. Is a gov.agency….they can heat atmosphere wt radars then spray aluminum particles they like to push the Jet N.or S.or slow it down, called geoengineering. They made it rain on the Ho Chemen trail everyday for 4 months .

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